“Try me,” Richard replied. “I will shut down the pediatric wing first. Your little twins won’t have a bed to sleep in.”

My heart stopped.

I sat up in bed, a gasp escaping my lips, but the phone was still on the desk miles away. They couldn’t hear me.

“They are your grandchildren,” Ethan said, his voice trembling with disbelief.

“They are bastards,” Eleanor said coldly. “They do not carry our name, and they never will.”

“Leave,” Richard said. “Go back to your patients, Ethan. Leave the girl to her fate.”

“I am not leaving her,” Ethan said. “And I am taking the kids.”

“If you walk out of this house with those files, I will have the police arrest Hannah for violating her old non-disclosure agreement,” Richard said. “I will tie her up in court until she has nothing left.”

I stared at the wall of my dark hospital room, tears spilling over my eyelashes.

They had planned this from the very beginning.

I wanted to scream into the receiver, to tell Ethan to run, to tell him not to listen.

But my body felt heavy.